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Gisela Elsner (2 May 1937 – 13 May 1992) was a German writer. She won the Prix Formentor in 1964 for her novel Die Riesenzwerge (The Giant Dwarfs).

Early life

Elsner was born in Nuremberg, Middle Franconia. She was born to a well-to-do family, and grew up with her sister, Heidi, and brother, Richard. Her father was a Director at Siemens. She graduated from a Gymnasium in Nuremberg in 1957. In 1959, she went to Vienna to study philosophy, Germanic letters and drama.

Career

Elsner then lived as a freelance writer in various places: Lake Starnberg, Frankfurt, in Rome from 1963 to 1964, in London from 1964 to 1970, then in Paris, Hamburg, New York, and finally in Munich.

She was among the members of Group 47, which also included Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll.

In her 1970 novel Berührungsverbot (The Touch Ban or The Prohibition of Contact), several couples try to transcend the limits of the bourgeois sexual mores of their middle-class background by engaging in group sex orgies. In Switzerland, a journal that published excerpts from the novel was banned, and in Austria it was attacked as harmful to children.

Elsner described herself as a Leninist. She was a long lasting member of the German Communist Party. She was an ardent supporter of the government of East Germany, and left the German Communist Party in June 1989 due to their pro-Gorbachev tendencies. She returned to the party in October 1989 as a highly critical and "uncomfortable" member, as a display of her strong communist convictions.

Her political position was in lifelong conflict with her bourgeois upbringing.

Personal life

Elsner married author Klaus Roehler in Planegg in 1958. They had a son together, Oskar Roehler, who was born in Starnberg in 1959. They later divorced, after Elsner left her husband and lost custody of her son.

She then remarried to Hans Platchek in 1976, who worked as a painter, art critic and author.

Death and legacy

Elsner's mental health began to decline due to a mix of economic problems, lack of literary success, and loss of political perspective after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She became increasingly isolated. In 1992, Elster was taken to a private medical clinic in Munich after collapsing on a public street. Elsner committed suicide by jumping out of a fourth-story window at the same clinic, on May 13, 1992.

A dramatized film about her life, No Place to Go, was made by her son Oskar Roehler.

Elsner's literary work is stored in the literary archives of the Monacensia, the literary archives of the city of Munich.

A literary prize, the "Gisela-Elsner-Literaturpreis" was established in her honor in 2021.

References

1. Gunter Grass, The Art of Fiction No. 124 Interviewed by Elizabeth Gaffney for The Paris Review , issue 119, summer 1991, in Archive: Archive.org.
2. Petri Liukkonen, Günter Grass, Writers' Calendar. Archived in Günter Grass in Books and Writers. Page saved by the Wayback Machine.
3. "Das Berührungsverbot"
4. Georg Fülberth: KPD und DKP 1945–1990. Zwei kommunistische Parteien in der vierten Periode kapitalistischer Entwicklung. Distel-Verlag, Heilbronn 1990 p. 131
5. Georg Fülberth: KPD und DKP 1945–1990. Zwei kommunistische Parteien in der vierten Periode kapitalistischer Entwicklung. Distel-Verlag, Heilbronn 1990 S. 131.
6. Christine Künzel im Gespräch: Die Schriftstellerin Gisela Elsner (1937–1992) - Kommunistin aus Haltung und Überzeugung, Unsere Zeit 28 April 2017, S. 12
7. CV Gisela Elsner, (pdf;47,6 KB), retrieved 12 April 2024
8. Ivo Kranzfelder: Platschek, Hans Philipp. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6, S. 515 f. (Digitalisat).
9. Christine Künzel (Hrsg.): Die letzte Kommunistin. Texte zu Gisela Elsner. konkret Literatur Verlag, Hamburg 2009. p. 22
10. Kalliope | Verbundkatalog für Archiv- und archivähnliche Bestände und nationales Nachweisinstrument für Nachlässe und Autographen. Retrieved 26 February 2024.
11. Zur Verleihung des 1. Gisela-Elsner-Literaturpreises in Nürnberg – Eine großartige Frau, Kommunistin und Kämpferin, Unsere Zeit 16 July 2021.

Further reading

• Resources in your library
• Resources in other libraries

• Resources in your library
• Resources in other libraries

• Christine Flitner: Frauen in der Literaturkritik. Elfriede Jelinek und Gisela Elsner im Feuilleton der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. (= Frauen in der Literaturgeschichte, Bd. 3) Pfaffenweiler 1995.
• Oskar Roehler: Die Unberührbare, Köln 2002
• Dorothe Cremer: „Ihre Gebärden sind riesig, ihre Äußerungen winzig". Zu Gisela Elsners Die Riesenzwerge; Schreibweise und soziale Realität der Adenauerzeit. Herbolzheim: Centaurus Verlag, 2003.
• Martina Süess: Wenn Otto sich vertilgt. In: WOZ Die Wochenzeitung, 3 July 2008, Online-Version.
• Christine Künzel (Hrsg.): Die letzte Kommunistin. Texte zu Gisela Elsner. (= konkret texte 49) Hamburg: konkret Literatur Verlag, 2009. ISBN 978-3-930786-56-5

• 1937 births
• 1992 deaths
• Writers from Nuremberg
• German Communist Party politicians
• 20th-century German women writers
• Suicides by jumping in Germany
• 1992 suicides